Contradiction and confluence. Singularity and totality. Break-up and renewal. On After the Sting of It, Kelly McMichael performs a wild yet precise balancing act in a constant process of redefinition, offering shifting perspectives emotionally and skipping genres musically for an album that’s always asking you to hold two ideas at once. With art-rock production flair that belies its humble processes, McMichael weaves unexpected sounds around her poignant, incisive words for a self-contained journey through the psyche.

The follow-up to 2021’s hit Waves—for which McMichael received an East Coast Music Award, three Music NL Awards, and a spot on the Polaris Prize shortlist—builds on its classic-rock core and expands wildly into psychedelic synth, drum machines, and found sounds. Though Waves was her solo debut, McMichael is no novice, previously performing as Renders and in the bands of Sarah Harmer, The Burning Hell, and the Hidden Cameras.

The cover for After the Sting of It—a collage of polaroids, fabric, and pieces of a painting by McMichael’s Oma Yolande Renders—offers an overture of what awaits on the vinyl inside: myriad moods and influences pulled together into coherence by a confident architect. The hot cinnamon red border holding it all in reflects its mood, angry and passionate. Like Waves it was recorded in McMichael’s adopted home of St. John’s, Newfoundland, also with the singer-songwriter Jake Nicoll, who also engineered and co-produced Waves. McMichael made much of Sting at home by herself; her debut’s success, she says, “gave me the confidence to be more playful.”

After the Sting of It is impressive in its emotional duality and unconcerned about fitting into any particular genre, music that sits in the comfort of its core ideas while being utterly unafraid to try new things. It plays exactly how its maker intended. “I write and record in a way that you’re just giving the song what it needs,” says McMichael. “Why limit the creativity? I don’t want limitations.”